SAC2 Standalone Smartcard Reader

Quick look

Within federal agencies, smart-card readers may soon become as ubiquitous as cell phones. As agencies work to comply with Federal Information Processing Standard 201, or just beef up their security, smart-card readers are the natural choice. You can put one on a protected system or your personal system and deny access to anyone without the proper card ID.

You may not be thinking about it now in the summer heat, but cold and flu season will be upon us before you know it, and any device shared by multiple users can become a petri dish for breeding germs. Imagine a smart-card reader protecting a system that is only supposed to be used by executives. One chief gets sick, and that access point becomes the means to pass on the illness to the entire executive staff.

The external SAC2 Standalone Smartcard Reader from Unotron Inc. of Westwood, N.J., can protect users from this fate as it protects the network. Simply take the reader to a sink, pour on some antibacterial dish soap and wash it. Use a hair dryer, the air blower in a bathroom, or just shake out the water and let it dry. When it is dry, plug the device back into a USB port, and it is ready to go again.

In addition to being very handy in cold and flu season, the SAC2's sealed components make it more rugged for use in harsh environments. It will work following rain or even a sandstorm. And should you spill something on it, from coffee to oil, you can simply wash it off and disinfect it.

We tested the SAC2 in the lab and found it not only easy to install but extremely quick as well. LEDs quickly show whether your card has been accepted or rejected, so a guard could observe the results locally or through a verification program. We washed the SAC2 more than 20 times using dish soap and warm water. After drying, it worked just as well as before.